The blade fell.
In that instant, time seemed to stand still. With a soft hiss, the golden flames burning on the Solomon Ritual Sword made contact with the Void Dragon's silver-white body. The sound was like a red-hot iron plunging into ice water.
The Void Dragon had not even reacted. Its thoughts were still stuck in absurd questioning when that cold weapon—which, to a C'tan remnant, seemed primitive—struck its head.
The blade pierced through.
The Void Dragon's scales were incredibly hard; as a C'tan, its scales were among the sturdiest substances in the material universe. Adam's strike, though capable of splitting mountains and parting rivers, only barely managed to puncture the scales before being firmly wedged in place. From a purely physical damage perspective, this was hardly an injury, akin to a human being bitten by a mosquito.
But the Void Dragon's eyes went wide.
A massive volume of dragon blood erupted. It was an indescribable silver-white plasma, appearing as if the glory of the galaxy had been condensed into a liquid state, with every drop emitting a soft radiance in the darkness. It surged from the wound, spreading and dissipating into the air like the arterial spray of a star.
The Void Dragon was stunned. Was this logical? That seemingly ordinary cold weapon could ignore a C'tan's defenses and inflict real damage. Tens of thousands of years ago, when that Ape-God fought it, the Void Dragon could feel massive fluctuations of Warp energy and understood how it was being hurt. But it had never seen anything like this. It simply did not make sense.
"...Are you serious?" The Void Dragon's voice vibrated through space, carrying ancient hatred and an unmaskable trace of fear.
"What, can you still not see the situation clearly?" Adam's lips curled upward.
The Void Dragon understood. "Arrogant!!!"
The C'tan flew into a rage. Its gargantuan head reared back, flinging Adam and his sword away. The silver-white body twisted in the dark void, and the dragon-like maw opened to its limit, appearing capable of swallowing stars.
Then, the dragon breath erupted.
The void itself roared. In Adam's pupils, countless strange traces manifested within the Void Dragon's mouth, surging toward the great enemy like a world-ending flood. Wherever it passed, space itself dissolved. Compared to the Void Dragon shard Adam had slain before, this strike was more than a hundred times more powerful.
Adam remained unfazed. The violent void torrent surged, and then, nothing happened. He took a step forward, calmly passing through the seemingly all-destroying turbulence. The energy capable of dissolving space acted like ordinary water against his reality warping, causing no effect.
However, a certain Dragon Guardian watching the battle met a different fate. Dalia didn't even have time to cry out. Her lower body, from the waist down, was swept over by the seemingly ordinary void turbulence. The elementary particles constituting her body silently crumbled into dust, drifting into the air and vanishing on the spot.
Dalia looked down at her broken body and shook her head wordlessly. "Oh, well..." Before she could finish, she fell backward. She died instantly.
Adam glanced over, his expression unchanged. It wasn't a major issue. Since Dalia was a Perpetual, a person with a built-in infinite respawn mechanic, she would revive if left alone for a while.
As for why Adam hadn't moved to save her... just moments ago, during a fierce exchange of attacks, the Void Dragon had endured several slashes from Adam at a significant cost just to kill Dalia. What kind of grudge was this?
"It is over," the Void Dragon's voice echoed.
Since it had briefly avenged its imprisonment by killing the jailer, it had no intention of lingering. This person was too bizarre. It had to flee... no, it was a strategic withdrawal. A C'tan's revenge is never too late, even after ten thousand years. As long as it broke out of this cursed place and reached deep space, it could escape at unimaginable speeds, hide somewhere to accumulate power, and wait for a chance at total vengeance.
The Void Dragon's wings snapped open. They were wings composed of flowing light, so dazzling they evoked images of massive solar prominences erupting from a star's surface. With a beat of its wings, the Void Dragon's massive body accelerated instantly, charging upward.
Under its faster-than-sound flight, the surroundings blurred into a retreat... Wait, that wasn't right. The Void Dragon suddenly realized something. Speed of sound was nothing to a C'tan shard. If it went all out, the speed of light shouldn't be an insurmountable boundary for a C'tan. Why was it only moving at this speed?
The Void Dragon halted, shocked. This was the Noctis Labyrinth. It was still inside the Noctis Labyrinth! The seal—the seal set by the Emperor's own hand—still enveloped it, suppressing its power.
But that made no sense. The seal had clearly opened; it had seen it with its own eyes. Why was this happening?
"Domain Expansion, boy!"
On the other side, the Dragonslayer continued the pursuit. The brilliant sword light flared again. This time, the Void Dragon didn't even see how Adam moved. Time seemed to have been deleted; the process was skipped, leading directly to the result. Several new sword marks of various sizes appeared on its body.
Indeed, just as the Void Dragon saw, the Noctis Labyrinth had opened. But it hadn't opened completely. Under the influence of Adam's reality-warping ability, what was originally a closed space had become an open domain. This domain covered the entire plateau region of the Noctis Labyrinth. As long as the dragon did not leave this area, it would suffer the ultimate restrictions the Emperor had set against it.
This was called Domain Expansion!
"What the hell are you?!" The Void Dragon's voice carried a rare loss of composure.
How could this be more ridiculous than a C'tan? Even in the War in Heaven against the Old Ones, it had never seen anything so absurd. I've only been in prison for a few tens of thousands of years, not millions; has the outside world evolved this much?
There was no time for more thought. The Void Dragon spread its wings and sped off in another direction. This time it was smarter; it stopped blind sprinting and began to glide through the sky. Its massive body traced a graceful arc in the air, light-wings trailing a brilliant wake as it tried to clear the covered distance at top speed.
Then, divine punishment descended.